Smileys are graphical representations of commonly used “emoticons”, such
as :-). When smileys are turned on, the system will display a small
graphic of a smiley-face instead of the emoticon text, like this:

Note the “column” parameter in the emoticon tag. It allows you to
specify how many columns of smilies the table will show.

ExpressionEngine will then automatically populate the table with all of the
smiley images that you have in whatever directory you have specified as your
“smilies” directory in the Settings ‣ Content & Design
section of the Control Panel.